ng, poor old Landor's oak opposite."

Of Milsand he wrote to a friend: "I never knew or shall know his like
among men," and to Milsand, who had assisted him in some proof-reading, he
wrote acknowledging his "invaluable assistance," and said:

"The fact is, in the case of a writer with my peculiarities and
habits, somebody quite ignorant of what I may have meant to write, and
only occupied with what is really written, ought to supervise the
thing produced. I won't attempt to thank you, dearest friend.... The
poem will reach you in about a fortnight. I look forward with all
confidence and such delight to finding us all together again in the
autumn. All love to your wife and daughter. R. B."

Milsand, writing of Browning in the _Revue_, revealed his high
appreciation of the poet when he said: "Browning suggests a power even
greater than his achievement. He speaks like a spirit who is able to do
that which to past centuries has been almost impossible."

It was St. Aubin that furnished Browning with material for his poem, "Red
Cotton Night-cap Country," the title of which was suggested by Miss
Thackeray (now Lady Ritchie) who had a cottage there one summer, near
those of Browning and Milsand. Browning and his sister occupied one of the
most primitive of cottages, but the location was beautiful, perched on the
cliff of St. Aubin, and commanded a changeful panorama of sea and sky.
"The sitting-room door opened to the garden and the sea beyond--a
fresh-swept bare floor, a table, three straw chairs, one book upon the
table,--the only book he had with him. The bedrooms were as bare as the
sitting-room, but there was a little dumb piano standing in a corner, on
which he used to practice in the early morning. Mr. Browning declared they
were perfectly satisfied with their little house; that his brains,
squeezed as dry as a sponge, were only ready for fresh air."[12] As all
Browning readers will remember, "Red Cotton Night-cap Country" is
dedicated to Miss Thackeray.

In the succeeding autumn Browning passed some weeks at Fontainebleau,
where he was absorbed in reading Aeschylus, and in making an especial study
of the great dramatist. It was perhaps at this time that he conceived the
idea of translating the Agamemnon, which, he says in his preface, "was
commanded of me by my venerated friend Thomas Carlyle, and rewarded it
will be if I am permitted to dignify it by the prefatory insertion of his
dear