heels I
don't know; what men require I know as little; and of what they are in
possession I know not.... With this I send you your 'Sordello.' I
suppose, I am sure, indeed, that the translation from Dante, on the
fly-leaf, is your own...."

In another letter to Alfred Domett, Browning thus refers to Tennyson:

"... But how good when good he is! That noble 'Locksley Hall!'"

Browning had already become enamored of Italy; and Mrs. Bridell-Fox,
writing to William Sharp, speaks of meeting the poet after his return, and
thus describes the impression he made upon her:[2]

"I remember him as looking in often in the evenings, having just
returned from his first visit to Venice. I cannot tell the date for
certain. He was full of enthusiasm for that Queen of Cities. He used
to illustrate his glowing descriptions of its beauties, the palaces,
the sunsets, the moonrises, by a most original kind of etching. Taking
up a bit of stray notepaper, he would hold it over a lighted candle,
moving the paper about gently till it was cloudily smoked over, and
then utilizing the darker smears for clouds, shadows, water, or what
not, would etch with a dry pen the forms of lights on cloud and
palace, on bridge or gondola, on the vague and dreamy surface he had
produced. My own passionate longing to see Venice dates from those
delightful, well-remembered evenings of my childhood."

This visit of the young poet to Italy forged the link of that golden chain
which was to unite all his future with that land of art and song which
held for him such wonderful Sibylline leaves of the yet undreamed-of
chapters of his life.

CHAPTER IV

1833-1841

"O Life, O Beyond,
_Art_ thou fair, _art_ thou sweet?"

"How the world is made for each of us!
How all we perceive and know in it
Tends to some moment's product thus,
When a soul declares itself--to wit,
By its fruit, the thing it does!"

ELIZABETH BARRETT'S LOVE FOR THE GREEK POETS--LYRICAL WORK--SERIOUS
ENTRANCE ON PROFESSIONAL LITERATURE--NOBLE IDEAL OF POETRY--LONDON
LIFE--KENYON--FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF ROBERT BROWNING.

Elizabeth Barrett was but twelve days in translating the "Prometheus
Bound" of Aeschylus, and of the result of this swift achievement she
herself declared, when laughingly discussing this work with Home in later
years, that it ought to have been "thrown in the fire immed