of his
first meeting with the poet, wrote--"Read 'Paracelsus,' a work of great
daring, starred with poetry of thought, feeling, and diction, but
occasionally obscure: the writer can scarcely fail to be a leading
spirit of his time." The tragedian's house, whither he went at week-ends
and on holidays, was at Elstree, a short distance to the northward of
Hampstead: and there he invited Browning, among other friends, to come
on the last day of December and spend New Year's Day (1836).[12] When
alluding, in after years, to this visit, Browning always spoke of it as
one of the red-letter days of his life. It was here he first met
Forster, with whom he at once formed what proved to be an enduring
friendship; and on this occasion, also, that he was urged by his host to
write a poetic play.

[Footnote 11: For many interesting particulars concerning Macready and
Browning, and the production of "Strafford," etc., _vide_ the
_Reminiscences_, vol. i.]

[Footnote 12: It was for Macready's eldest boy, William Charles, that
Browning wrote one of the most widely popular of his poems, "The Pied
Piper of Hamelin." It is said to have been an impromptu performance, and
to have been so little valued by the author that he hesitated about its
inclusion in "Bells and Pomegranates." It was inserted at the last
moment, in the third number, which was short of "copy." Some one
(anonymous, but whom I take to be Mr. Nettleship) has publicly alluded
to his possession of a rival poem (entitled, simply, "Hamelin") by
Robert Browning the elder, and of a letter which he had sent to a friend
along with the verses, in which he writes: "Before I knew that Robert
had begun the story of the 'Rats' I had contemplated a tale on the same
subject, and proceeded with it as far as you see, but, on hearing that
Robert had a similar one on hand, I desisted." This must have been in
1842, for it was in that year that the third part of _Bells and
Pomegranates_ was published. In 1843, however, he finished it.
Browning's "Pied Piper" has been translated into French, Russian,
Italian, and German. The latter (or one German) version is in prose. It
was made in 1880, for a special purpose, and occupied the whole of one
number of the local paper of Hameln, which is a quaint townlet in
Hanover.]

Browning promised to consider the suggestion. Six weeks later, in
company with Forster, with whom he had become intimate, he called upon
Macready, to discuss the plot of a tragedy