. He descanted especially on
the vast increase that had accrued to the sum of human happiness
in Italy since the success of that remarkable movement. When Ibsen
rapped out the conviction that what Italy needed was to be invaded
and conquered once and for all by Austria, I feared that an explosion
was inevitable. But hardly had my translation of the inauspicious
sentiment been uttered when the plum-pudding was borne into the room,
flaming on its dish. I clapped my hands wildly at sight of it, in the
English fashion, and was intensely relieved when the yet more resonant
applause of Robert Browning followed mine. Disaster had been averted
by a crowning mercy. But I am afraid that Ibsen thought us both quite
mad.

The next topic that was started, harmless though it seemed at first,
was fraught with yet graver peril. The world of scholarship was at
that time agitated by the recent discovery of what might or might not
prove to be a fragment of Sappho. Browning proclaimed his unshakeable
belief in the authenticity of these verses. To my surprise, Ibsen,
whom I had been unprepared to regard as a classical scholar, said
positively that they had not been written by Sappho. Browning
challenged him to give a reason. A literal translation of the reply
would have been "Because no woman ever was capable of writing a
fragment of good poetry." Imagination reels at the effect this would
have had on the recipient of "Sonnets from the Portuguese." The
agonised interpreter, throwing honour to the winds, babbled some
wholly fallacious version of the words. Again the situation had
been saved; but it was of the kind that does not even in furthest
retrospect lose its power to freeze the heart and constrict the
diaphragm.

I was fain to thank heaven when, immediately after the termination
of the meal, Ibsen rose, bowed to his host, and bade me express
his thanks for the entertainment. Out on the Grand Canal, in the
gondola which had again been placed at our disposal, his passion
for "documents" that might bear on his work was quickly manifested.
He asked me whether Herr Browning had ever married. Receiving an
emphatically affirmative reply, he inquired whether Fru Browning had
been happy. Loth though I was to cast a blight on his interest in the
matter, I conveyed to him with all possible directness the impression
that Elizabeth Barrett had assuredly been one of those wives who do
not dance tarantellas nor slam front-doors. He did not, to the