ation which he privately expresses for his
works. The fact was incomprehensible to Mr. Browning--it was so foreign
to his own nature; and he commented on it with a touch, though merely a
touch, of bitterness, when repeating to a friend some almost extravagant
eulogium which in earlier days he had received from him tete-a-tete. 'If
only,' he said, 'those words had been ever repeated in public, what good
they might have done me!'

* He always thought her a hard and unlovable woman, and I
believe little liking was lost between them. He told a
comical story of how he had once, unintentionally but rather
stupidly, annoyed her. She had asked him, as he was standing
by her tea-table, to put the kettle back on the fire. He
took it out of her hands, but, preoccupied by the
conversation he was carrying on, deposited it on the
hearthrug. It was some time before he could be made to see
that this was wrong; and he believed Mrs. Carlyle never
ceased to think that he had a mischievous motive for doing
it.

In the spring of 1886, he accepted the post of Foreign Correspondent to
the Royal Academy, rendered vacant by the death of Lord Houghton. He had
long been on very friendly terms with the leading Academicians, and a
constant guest at the Banquet; and his fitness for the office admitted
of no doubt. But his nomination by the President, and the manner in
which it was ratified by the Council and general body, gave him sincere
pleasure.

Early in 1887, the 'Parleyings' appeared. Their author is still the same
Robert Browning, though here and there visibly touched by the hand
of time. Passages of sweet or majestic music, or of exquisite fancy,
alternate with its long stretches of argumentative thought; and the
light of imagination still plays, however fitfully, over statements
of opinion to which constant repetition has given a suggestion of
commonplace. But the revision of the work caused him unusual trouble.
The subjects he had chosen strained his powers of exposition; and I
think he often tried to remedy by mere verbal correction, what was a
defect in the logical arrangement of his ideas. They would slide into
each other where a visible dividing line was required. The last stage of
his life was now at hand; and the vivid return of fancy to his
boyhood's literary loves was in pathetic, perhaps not quite accidental,
coincidence with the fact. It will be well to pause at this b