wherein she is as a moon of beauty above
conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled gallery of
portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria, what a movement of intensest
life!

It is pleasant to know of one of them, "The Italian in England," that
Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem to
certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman could
sympathise with them.

After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his _Wanderjahr_
in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo, that white little
hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints for "Sordello," and "Pippa
Passes," and whither he returned in the last year of his life, as with
unconscious significance he himself said, "on his way homeward."

In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year,
he returned to Camberwell. "Sordello" he had in some fashion begun, but
had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout the autumn of
1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus." In this period, also, he wrote
some short poems, two of them of particular significance. The first of
the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature 'Z' in the
August number of the _Monthly Repository_ for 1834. It was never
reprinted by the author, whose judgment it is impossible not to approve
as well as to respect. Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this
earliest effort is not the most fortunate. It was in the _Repository_
also, in 1835 and 1836, that the other poems appeared, four in all.

The song in "Pippa Passes," beginning "A King lived long ago," was one
of these; and the lyric, "Still ailing, wind? Wilt be appeased or no?"
afterwards revised and incorporated in "James Lee," was another. But the
two which are much the most noteworthy are "Johannes Agricola" and
"Porphyria." Even more distinctively than in "Pauline," in their novel
sentiment, new method, and generally unique quality, is a new voice
audible in these two poems. They are very remarkable as the work of so
young a poet, and are interesting as showing how rapidly he had outgrown
the influence of any other of his poetic kindred. "Johannes Agricola" is
significant as being the first of those dramatic studies of warped
religiosity, of strange self-sophistication, which have afforded so much
matter for thought. In its dramatic concision, its complex psychological
significance, and its unique, if to unaccustomed ears somewhat ba