ROBERT BROWNING I93 and among them, especially at this moment, are the references to the place which, for fifty years, 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, higher and higher runs A child, bare-foot and rosy." Asolo appears again very soon afterward in the lovely opening of the play " Pippa Passes." This came first in the series which appeared in the years 1841-46, un- der the odd title of " Bells and Pomegranates." There were eight numbers of this publication thin, yellow-covered pamphlets, printed in double columns of small type, by Mr. Moxon ; surely as unattractive a way as a poet ever attempted of bringing his wares before the world. Doubtless it was done in order that the low price might appeal to a large audience, but we doubt whether the sale oi " Bells and Pomegranates " was ever large. The series is exceedingly rare now, and the curious who prefer to read those noble poems in this unsightly form have t P a y jC*o or ,12 for the privilege of possessing them. In this first series ap- peared all the author's plays except " Strafford," namely, " Pippa Passes," " King Victor and King Charles," " The Return of the Druses," " A Blot on the Scutch- eon," " Colombe's Birthday," " Luria," and " A Soul's Tragedy." But, alternat- ing with these, appeared many of the shorter poems which have long since passed into the common treasure-house of all who care for poetry throughout the Eng- lish-speaking world. One of the numbers contains the set called " Dramatic Lyrics," including " In a Gondola," " Waring," and " The Pied Piper of Hame- Hn." Another number contained " Dramatic Romances and Lyrics," among which are to be found such favorite poems as " How they Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," and " Saul." In this group of poems were also to be found the celebrated lines called "The Lost Leader." People at the time supposed that these indignant verses were aimed at the Tory backsliding of Wordsworth ; and, indeed, though Mr. Browning in after-years denied their spe- cial applicability to the old Laureate, there can be no doubt that when he wrote them he had Wordsworth more or less in his mind. In 1846 there happened to Mr. Browning something much more important than the publication of this or that poem; for it was then, on September 12th, in Marylebone parish church, that he was married to the poetess, Elizabeth Bar- rett. Their union was the direct result, in the first instance, of poetic and intel- lectual sympathy, and it was to the admiration which Miss Barrett, then an in- valid, felt for the author of " Bells and Pomegranates," that they owed their first introduction. For the greater part of their married life Mr. and Mrs. Browning lived almost entirely in Italy, and especially at that house in Florence, close by the Porta Romana, which now bears a tablet with her name, and which gave its title to one of her best-known volumes of poetry. They had one child, born in 1849, Robert Barrett Browning, favorably known as a painter and a sculptor
