, to whom _Sordello_ was dedicated, died
in 1886. "I never knew," said Browning, "or ever shall know, his like
among men." But though both fame and a growing isolation indicated
that he was passing towards the evening of his days, though he bore
traces of the progress, in a milder attitude towards things, and a
greater preference for long exiles with those he loved, one thing
continued in him with unconquerable energy--there was no diminution in
the quantity, no abatement in the immense designs of his intellectual
output.

In 1871 he produced _Balaustion's Adventure_, a work exhibiting not
only his genius in its highest condition of power, but something more
exacting even than genius to a man of his mature and changed life,
immense investigation, prodigious memory, the thorough assimilation
of the vast literature of a remote civilisation. _Balaustion's
Adventure_, which is, of course, the mere framework for an English
version of the Alcestis of Euripides, is an illustration of one of
Browning's finest traits, his immeasurable capacity for a classic
admiration. Those who knew him tell us that in conversation he never
revealed himself so impetuously or so brilliantly as when declaiming
the poetry of others; and _Balaustion's Adventure_ is a monument of
this fiery self-forgetfulness. It is penetrated with the passionate
desire to render Euripides worthily, and to that imitation are for the
time being devoted all the gigantic powers which went to make the
songs of Pippa and the last agony of Guido. Browning never put himself
into anything more powerfully or more successfully; yet it is only an
excellent translation. In the uncouth philosophy of Caliban, in the
tangled ethics of Sludge, in his wildest satire, in his most
feather-headed lyric, Browning was never more thoroughly Browning than
in this splendid and unselfish plagiarism. This revived excitement in
Greek matters; "his passionate love of the Greek language" continued
in him thenceforward till his death. He published more than one poem
on the drama of Hellas. _Aristophanes' Apology_ came out in 1875, and
_The Agamemnon of AEschylus_, another paraphrase, in 1877. All three
poems are marked by the same primary characteristic, the fact that the
writer has the literature of Athens literally at his fingers' ends. He
is intimate not only with their poetry and politics, but with their
frivolity and their slang; he knows not only Athenian wisdom, but
Athenian folly; not on