weather" blue above, and the

"great opaque
Blue breadth of sea without a break"

under the walls of the seaside palazzo in Southern Italy, "where the
baked cicala dies of drouth"; and the blue lilies about the harp of
golden-haired David; and Solomon gold-robed in the blue abyss of his
cedar house, "like the centre spike of gold which burns deep in the
blue-bell's womb";[66] and the "gaze of Apollo" through the gloom of
Verona woods;[67] he sees the American pampas--"miles and miles of gold
and green," "where the sunflowers blow in a solid glow," with a
horse--"coal-black"--careering across it; and his swarthy Ethiop uses
the yellow poison-wattles of a lizard to divine with.[68] If he imagines
the "hairy-gold orbs" of the sorb-fruit, they must be ensconced in
"black glossy myrtle-berries," foils in texture as in hue;[69] and he
neglects the mellow harmonies of autumnal decay in order to paint the
leaf which is like a splash of blood intense, abrupt, across the flame
of a golden shield.[70] He makes the most of every hint of contrast he
finds, and delights in images which accentuate the rigour of antithesis;
Cleon's mingled black and white slaves remind him of a tesselated
pavement, and Blougram's fluctuating faith and doubt of a chess-board.
And when, long after the tragic break-up of his Italian home, he
reverted in thought to Miss Blagden's Florentine garden, the one
impression that sifted itself out in his tell-tale memory was of spots
of colour and light upon dark backgrounds,--"the herbs in red flower,
and the butterflies on the top of the wall under the olive-trees."[71]

[Footnote 66: _Popularity_.]

[Footnote 67: _Sordello_.]

[Footnote 68: Ibid.]

[Footnote 69: _Englishman in Italy_.]

[Footnote 70: _By the Fireside_.]

[Footnote 71: Mrs Orr, _Life_, p. 258.]

Browning's colouring is thus strikingly expressive of the build of his
mind, as sketched above. It is the colouring of a realist in so far as
it is always caught from life, and never fantastic or mythical. But it
is chosen with an instinctive and peremptory bias of eye and
imagination--the index of a mind impatient of indistinct confusions and
placid harmony, avid of intensity, decision, and conflict.

V.

2. JOY IN FORM.

If the popular legend of Browning ignores his passion for colour, it
altogether scouts the suggestion that he had a peculiar delight in form.
By general consent he lacked the most ordinary and