ry, and in communion
with kindred spirits. At one time he had rooms, or rather a room, in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Strand, whither he could go when he
wished to be in town continuously for a time, or when he had any social
or theatrical engagement.

Browning's life at this period was distraught by more than one episode
of the heart. It would be strange were it otherwise. He had in no
ordinary degree a rich and sensuous nature, and his responsiveness was
so quick that the barriers of prudence were apt to be as shadowy to him
as to the author of "The Witch of Atlas." But he was the earnest student
for the most part, and, above all, the poet. His other pleasure, in his
happy vagrant days, was to join company with any tramps, gipsies, or
other wayfarers, and in good fellowship gain much knowledge of life that
was useful at a later time. Rustic entertainments, particularly
peripatetic "Theatres Royal," had a singular fascination for him, as for
that matter had rustic oratory, whether of the alehouse or the pulpit.
At one period he took the keenest interest in sectaries of all kinds:
and often he incurred a gentle reproof from his mother because of his
nomad propensities in search of "_pastors_ new." There was even a time
when he seriously deliberated whether he should not combine literature
and religious ministry, as Faraday combined evangelical fervour with
scientific enthusiasm. "'Twas a girl with eyes like two dreams of night"
that saved him from himself, and defrauded the Church Independent of a
stalwart orator.

It was, as already stated, while he strolled through Dulwich Wood one
day that the thought occurred to him which was to find development and
expression in "Pippa Passes." "The image flashed upon him," writes his
intimate friend, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, "of some one walking thus alone
through life; one apparently too obscure to leave a trace of his or her
passage, yet exercising a lasting though unconscious influence at every
step of it; and the image shaped itself into the little silk-winder of
Asolo, Felippa or Pippa."

It has always seemed to me a radical mistake to include "Pippa Passes"
among Browning's dramas. Not only is it absolutely unactable, but
essentially undramatic in the conventional sense. True dramatic writing
concerns itself fundamentally with the apt conjunction of events, and
the more nearly it approximates to the verity of life the more likely is
it to be of immediate appeal. There