lusion, 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 temporary alliance 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 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 possib