in the poem belongs to the class, rural
inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to
the atmosphere.

[Illustration: An English Inn]

The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country
we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature
of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its
shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that
refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no
worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in
the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting
pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an
Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those
appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an
instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value,
remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything
original they may have written."

Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time
uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English
"Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat
by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead,
causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."

The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the
following bit of conversation between them.

"You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!
Because you happen to be twice my age
And twenty times my master, must perforce
No blink of daylight struggle through the web
There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,
And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!
A very pretty piece of shuttle-work
Was that--your mere chance question at the club--
'_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?
I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's
The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside
Chantilly; and, for good companionship,
There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose
We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'
I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!
Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?
I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?
On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse
The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?
No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.