most rare combination of a powerful personality united to a
nature tenderly sympathetic."

Another who knew him well perpetrated the _mot_ that "Tennyson hides
behind his laurels, and Browning behind the man of the world." Henry
James, whose gift of subtle analysis was never more felicitously revealed
than in his expressions about Browning, declared that the poet had two
personalities: one, the man of the world, who walked abroad, talked, did
his duty; the other, the Poet,--"an inscrutable personage,--who sat at
home and knew, as well he might, in what quarters of that sphere to look
for suitable company. The poet and the man of the world were disassociated
in him as they can rarely elsewhere have been."

For three or four summers after this sojourn in Scotland the Brownings
were at St. Aubin, in Brittany, where they had a cottage "not two steps
away" from that of his friend Milsand. In the early mornings Browning
would be seen pacing the sands, reading from his little Greek copy of
Homer; and in the late afternoons the two friends would stroll on the
Normandy beach with their arms around each other's shoulders. They are
described as very different in appearance,--Browning vigorous and buoyant,
Milsand nervous, thin, reserved,--but akin in a certain delicate
sensitiveness, a swift susceptibility to impressions. Of Browning Milsand
said that what he really valued most was his kindness, his simple, open,
radiant goodness. "All the chords of sympathy vibrated in his strong
voice," added Milsand. The French critic was very fond of the poet's son,
and in reference to him he once said: "The father has reason to be happy
that in walking before he has opened a path for his son, instead of making
him stumble." As has been seen, in Mrs. Browning's letters, she always
shared her husband's enthusiasm for Milsand, and the latter had said that
he felt in her "that shining superiority always concealing itself under
her unconscious goodness and lovely simplicity."

On Sundays at St. Aubin's, Browning frequently accompanied Milsand to the
little chapel of Chateau-Blagny, for Protestant worshipers. From his
cottage Browning could gaze across the bay to the lighthouse at Havre, and
he "saw with a thrill" the spot where he once passed a summer with his
wife.

Italian recollections sometimes rose before his inner vision. To Isa
Blagden, who had gone to Siena, he wrote that he could "see the fig-tree
under which Ba sat, reading and writi