use it without saying so.
But it is one of those which must have spontaneously
suggested themselves to many other of Mr. Browning's
readers.

It was unfortunate that new difficulties of style should have added
themselves on this occasion to those of subject and treatment; and the
reason of it is not generally known. Mr. John Sterling had made some
comments on the wording of 'Paracelsus'; and Miss Caroline Fox, then
quite a young woman, repeated them, with additions, to Miss Haworth,
who, in her turn, communicated them to Mr. Browning, but without making
quite clear to him the source from which they sprang. He took the
criticism much more seriously than it deserved, and condensed the
language of this his next important publication into what was nearly its
present form.

In leaving 'Sordello' we emerge from the self-conscious stage of Mr.
Browning's imagination, and his work ceases to be autobiographic in the
sense in which, perhaps erroneously, we have hitherto felt it to be.
'Festus' and 'Salinguerra' have already given promise of the world of
'Men and Women' into which he will now conduct us. They will be inspired
by every variety of conscious motive, but never again by the old (real
or imagined) self-centred, self-directing Will. We have, indeed, already
lost the sense of disparity between the man and the poet; for the
Browning of 'Sordello' was growing older, while the defects of the poem
were in many respects those of youth. In 'Pippa Passes', published one
year later, the poet and the man show themselves full-grown. Each has
entered on the inheritance of the other.

Neither the imagination nor the passion of what Mr. Gosse so fitly calls
this 'lyrical masque'* gives much scope for tenderness; but the quality
of humour is displayed in it for the first time; as also a strongly
marked philosophy of life--or more properly, of association--from
which its idea and development are derived. In spite, however, of these
evidences of general maturity, Mr. Browning was still sometimes boyish
in personal intercourse, if we may judge from a letter to Miss Flower
written at about the same time.

* These words, and a subsequent paragraph, are quoted from
Mr. Gosse's 'Personalia'.

Monday night, March 9 (? 1841).

My dear Miss Flower,--I have this moment received your very kind
note--of course, I understand your objections. How else? But they are
somewhat lightened already (confess--nay 'confess'