orward with the historical play
of "Strafford," which was produced at Covent Garden with Macready in
the title-part. It was not exactly a failure, but though the play
itself and Macready's acting attracted the admiration of the critics,
it was at once seen that the drama contained too much psychology and
too little movement for a popular success. Mr. Browning, however, did
not, for a long time to come, cease to be a "writer of plays," though
it was not till eleven years after that another drama of his, "A Blot
on the Scutcheon," was performed on the stage. The interval, however,
was full of poetic activity. The energetic search of the members of
the Browning Society, and especially of its founder, Mr. Furnivall,
has succeeded in putting on record the place of first publication of
several scattered poems of about this date. Four of them, including
"Porphyria," and "Johannes Agricola," appeared in the _Monthly
Repository_, edited by W. J. Fox, the Unitarian minister who was
afterward so well known for his eloquent speeches against the Corn
Laws. In 1840 came a small volume, bound, after the fashion of the
time, in gray paper boards, and called "Sordello," after the Provencal
poet mentioned in the "Purgatory" of Dante. The book appeared without
preface or dedication, but in the collected edition of 1863 it bears a
note addressed by Mr. Browning to his friend Monsieur Milsand, of
Dijon, which contains the characteristic expressions, "I wrote it
twenty-five years ago for only a few.... My stress lay on the
incidents in the development of a soul; little else is worth study. I,
at least, always thought so." "Sordello" in its original form is very
rare and valuable now, as all the early editions of Mr. Browning's
poetry have become; but on its first appearance nobody cared for
it--it was regarded as nothing but a hopeless puzzle by a bewildered
and defeated public. Even now, when Mr. Browning has long since formed
his own public, "Sordello" is probably less read than any other work
of his; it is too obscure and confused both in plot and in thought.
But all the same, there are many interesting things in "Sordello,"
and among them, especially at this moment, are the references to the
place which, for fifty yours, has fascinated the poet. Only the other
day he wrote "Asolando,"' and half a century ago we find him writing:

"Lo, on a healthy, brown, and nameless hill
By sparkling Asolo, in mist and chill,
Morning just up,