er to go to America, and other things
happened. Browning became absorbed in his "Sordello," and suddenly, on
Good Friday of 1838, he sailed for Venice, "intending to finish my poem
among the scenes it describes," he wrote to John Robertson, who had been
introduced to Browning by Miss Martineau. On a sailing ship, bound for
Trieste, the poet found himself the only passenger. It was on this voyage,
while between Gibraltar and Naples, that he wrote "How They Brought the
Good News from Ghent to Aix." It was written on deck, penciled on the
fly-leaf of Bartoli's _De' Simboli trasportati al Morale_. When Dr. Corson
first visited Browning in 1881, in his London home in Warwick Crescent,
Browning showed his guest this identical copy of the book, with the
penciled poem on the fly-leaves, of which Dr. Corson said, in a private
letter to a friend:

"One book in the library I was particularly interested in,--Bartoli's
_Simboli_, or, rather, in what the poet had written in pencil on its
fly-leaves, front and back, namely, 'How they brought the good news
from Ghent to Aix.'"

Dr. Corson added that he had been so often asked as to what this "good
news" was, that he put the question to Mr. Browning, who replied:

"'I don't remember whether I had in my mind any in particular, when I
wrote the poem'; and then, after a pause," continued Dr. Corson, "he
said, with a dash of expression characteristic of him, 'Of course,
very important news were carried between those two cities during that
period.'"

In Mrs. Orr's biography of Browning she quotes a long letter written by
him to Miss Haworth, in the late summer of 1838, after his return from
this Italian trip, in which he says:

"You will see 'Sordello' in a trice, if the fagging fit holds. I did
not write six lines while absent (except a scene in a play, jotted
down as we sailed through the straits of Gibraltar), but I did hammer
out some four, two of which are addressed to you,... I saw the most
gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world.... I went to Trieste, then to
Venice, then through Treviso, and Bassano to the mountains, delicious
Asolo, all my places and castles you will see. Then to Vicenza, Padua,
and Venice again. Then to Verona, Trent, Innspruck (the Tyrol),
Munich, Salzburg, Frankfort and Mayence; down the Rhine to Cologne,
then to Aix-le-Chapelle, Liege, and Antwerp; then home.... I saw very
f