g crowd', and repeated
Miss Thackeray's title. There can, however, be no doubt that his poetic
imagination, no less than his human insight, was amply vindicated by his
treatment of the story.

On leaving St.-Aubin he spent a month at Fontainebleau, in a house
situated on the outskirts of the forest; and here his principal indoor
occupation was reading the Greek dramatists, especially Aeschylus, to
whom he had returned with revived interest and curiosity. 'Red Cotton
Nightcap Country' was not begun till his return to London in the later
autumn. It was published in the early summer of 1873.

Chapter 17

1873-1878

London Life--Love of Music--Miss Egerton-Smith--Periodical Nervous
Exhaustion--Mers; 'Aristophanes' Apology'--'Agamemnon'--'The
Inn Album'--'Pacchiarotto and other Poems'--Visits to Oxford and
Cambridge--Letters to Mrs. Fitz-Gerald--St. Andrews; Letter
from Professor Knight--In the Savoyard Mountains--Death of Miss
Egerton-Smith--'La Saisiaz'; 'The Two Poets of Croisic'--Selections from
his Works.

The period on which we have now entered, covering roughly the ten or
twelve years which followed the publication of 'The Ring and the Book',
was the fullest in Mr. Browning's life; it was that in which the varied
claims made by it on his moral, and above all his physical energies,
found in him the fullest power of response. He could rise early and go
to bed late--this, however, never from choice; and occupy every hour of
the day with work or pleasure, in a manner which his friends recalled
regretfully in later years, when of two or three engagements which
ought to have divided his afternoon, a single one--perhaps only the most
formally pressing--could be fulfilled. Soon after his final return to
England, while he still lived in comparative seclusion, certain habits
of friendly intercourse, often superficial, but always binding, had
rooted themselves in his life. London society, as I have also implied,
opened itself to him in ever-widening circles, or, as it would be truer
to say, drew him more and more deeply into its whirl; and even before
the mellowing kindness of his nature had infused warmth into the least
substantial of his social relations, the imaginative curiosity of the
poet--for a while the natural ambition of the man--found satisfaction in
it. For a short time, indeed, he entered into the fashionable routine of
country-house visiting. Besides the instances I have already given,
and many oth