against inferring from the poet any habit or quality of the man;

and where also, under the impulse of the dramatic mood,
he enforces the lesson by saying more than he can possibly mean.

His readers might object that his human personality was so often plainly
revealed in his poeticutterance (whether or not that of Shakespeare was),

and so often also avowed by it, that the line which divided them
became impossible to draw. But he again would have rejoined

that the Poet could never express himself with any large freedom,
unless a fiction of impersonality were granted to him.

He might also have alleged, he often did allege, that in his case the fiction
would hold a great deal of truth; since, except in the rarest cases,

the very fact of poetic, above all of dramatic reproduction,
detracts from the reality of the thought or feeling reproduced.

It introduces the alloy of fancy without which the fixed outlines
of even living experience cannot be welded into poetic form.

He claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow
for the action in it of the constructiveimagination, in the exercise of which

all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itself
in seeking historical authority for every character or incident

which he employed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him.
I may (as indeed I must) concede this much, without impugning

either the pleasure or the gratitude with which he recognized
the increasing interest in his poems, and, if sometimes exhibited

in a mistaken form, the growing appreciation of them.
There was another and more strikingpeculiarity in Mr. Browning's attitude

towards his works: his constantconviction that the latest must be the best,
because the outcome of the fullest mental experience,

and of the longest practice in his art. He was keenly alive
to the necessary failings of youthfulliterary production;

he also practically denied to it that quality which so often places it
at an advantage over that, not indeed of more mature manhood,

but at all events of advancing age. There was much in his own experience
to blind him to the natural effects of time; it had been

a prolonged triumph over them. But the delusion, in so far as it was one,
lay deeper than the testimony of such experience, and would I think

have survived it. It was the essence of his belief that the mind
is superior to physical change; that it may be helped or hindered

by its temporaryalliance with the body, but will none the less outstrip it
in their joint course; and as intellect was for him the life of poetry,

so was the power of poetry independent of bodily progress and bodily decline.
This conviction pervaded his life. He learned, though happily very late,

to feel age an impediment; he never accepted it as a disqualification.
He finished his work very carefully. He had the better right to resent

any garbling of it, that this habitually" target="_blank" title="adv.习惯地">habitually took place through his punctuation,
which was always made with the fullest sense of its significance

to any but the baldest style, and of its special importance to his own.
I have heard him say: `People accuse me of not taking pains!

I take nothing BUT pains!' And there was indeed a curious contrast
between the irresponsible, often strangely unquestioned, impulse

to which the substance of each poem was due, and the conscientious labour
which he always devoted to its form. The laborious habit

must have grown upon him; it was natural that it should do so
as thought gained the ascendency over emotion in what he had to say.

Mrs. Browning told Mr. Val Prinsep that her husband `worked at a great rate;'
and this fact probably connected itself with the difficulty he then found

in altering the form or wording of any particular phrase;
he wrote most frequently under that lyrical inspiration

in which the idea and the form are least separable from each other.
We know, however, that in the later editions of his old work

he always corrected where he could; and if we notice the changed lines
in `Paracelsus' or `Sordello', as they appear in the edition of 1863,

or the slighter alterations indicated for the last reprint of his works,
we are struck by the care evinced in them for greater

smoothness of expression, as well as for greater accuracy and force.
He produced less rapidly in later life, though he could throw off

impromptu verses, whether serious or comical, with the utmost ease.
His work was then of a kind which required more deliberation;

and other claims had multiplied upon his time and thoughts.
He was glad to have accomplished twenty or thirty lines in a morning.

After lunch-time, for many years, he avoided, when possible,
even answering a note. But he always counted a day lost

on which he had not written something; and in those last years
on which we have yet to enter, he complained bitterly of the quantity

of ephemeral correspondence which kept him back from his proper work.
He once wrote, on the occasion of a short illness which confined him

to the house, `All my power of imagination seems gone. I might as well
be in bed!' He repeatedly determined to write a poem every day,

and once succeeded for a fortnight in doing so. He was then in Paris,
preparing `Men and Women'. `Childe Roland' and `Women and Roses'

were among those produced on this plan; the latter having been suggested
by some flowers sent to his wife. The lyrics in `Ferishtah's Fancies'

were written, I believe, on consecutive days; and the intention renewed itself
with his last work, though it cannot have been maintained.

He was not as great a reader in later as in earlier years;
he had neither time nor available strength to be so if he had wished;

and he absorbed almost consciously" target="_blank" title="ad.无意识地；不觉察地">unconsciously every item which added itself
to the sum of general knowledge. Books had indeed served for him

their most important purpose when they had satisfied the first curiosities
of his genius, and enabled it to establish its independence.

His mind was made up on the chief subjects of contemporary thought,
and what was novel or controversial in its proceeding

had no attraction for him. He would read anything, short of an English novel,
to a friend whose eyes required this assistance; but such pleasure

as he derived from the act was more often sympathetic than spontaneous,
even when he had not, as he often had, selected for it

a book which he already knew. In the course of his last decade
he devoted himself for a short time to the study of Spanish and Hebrew.

The Spanish dramatists yielded him a fund of new enjoyment; and he delighted
in his power of reading Hebrew in its most difficult printed forms.

He also tried, but with less result, to improve his knowledge of German.
His eyesight defied all obstacles of bad paper and ancient type,

and there was anxiety as well as pleasure to those about him
in his unfailing confidence in its powers. He never wore spectacles,

nor had the least consciousness" target="_blank" title="n.意识；觉悟；知觉">consciousness of requiring them. He would read
an old closely printed volume by the waning light of a winter afternoon,

positively refusing to use a lamp. Indeed his preference
of the faintest natural light to the best that could be artificially produced

was perhaps the one suggestion of coming change. He used for all purposes
a single eye; for the two did not combine in their action,

the right serving exclusively for near, the left for distant objects.
This was why in walking he often closed the right eye;

while it was indispensable to his comfort in reading,
not only that the light should come from the right side,

but that the left should be shielded from any luminous object, like the fire,
which even at the distance of half the length of a room

would strike on his field of vision and confuse the near sight.
His literary interest became increasingly centred on records of the lives

of men and women; especially of such men and women as he had known;
he was generally curious to see the newly published biographies,

though often disappointed by them. He would also read,
even for his amusement, good works of French or Italian fiction.

His allegiance to Balzac remained unshaken, though he was
conscious of lengthiness when he read him aloud. This author's

deep and hence often poeticrealism was, I believe, bound up
with his own earliest aspirations towards dramatic art.

His manner of reading aloud a story which he already knew
was the counterpart of his own method of construction.

He would claim his listener's attention for any apparently" target="_blank" title="ad.显然，表面上地">apparentlyunimportant fact
which had a part to play in it: he would say: `Listen to this description:

it will be important. Observe this character: you will see a great deal more
of him or her.' We know that in his own work nothing was thrown away;

no note was struck which did not add its vibration to the general utterance
of the poem; and his habitualgenerosity towards a fellow-worker

prompted him to seek and recognize the same quality,
even in productions where it was less conspicuous than in his own.

The patient reading which he required for himself was justified
by that which he always demanded for others; and he claimed it less

in his own case for his possible intricacies of thought or style,
than for that compactness of living structure in which

every detail or group of details was essential to the whole,
and in a certain sense contained it. He read few things with so much pleasure

as an occasional chapter in the Old Testament.
Mr. Browning was a brillianttalker; he was admittedly more a talker

than a conversationalist. But this quality had nothing in common
with self-assertion or love of display. He had too much respect

for the acquirements of other men to wish to impose silence on those
who were competent to speak; and he had great pleasure in listening