thinking, if you like,
How utterly dissociated was I. . . ."

--regardless of all aptitude in the allusion, making it simply because
it "burned up in his brain," just as days "struck fierce 'mid many a day
struck calm" were always _his_ days of excitement. . . . A hundred
Browning verses sing themselves around my memories of the flat in
Cromwell Road.

_Misconceptions_ was swung forth with gesture that figured swaying
branches:

"This is a spray the bird clung to. . . ."

You were to notice how the rhythms bent and tossed like boughs in that
first stanza--and to notice, also, how regrettable the second stanza
was. Nor shall I easily let slip the memory of _Apparent Failure_, thus
recited. He would begin at the second verse, the "Doric little Morgue"
verse. You were not to miss the great "phrase" in

"The three men who did most abhor
Their lives in Paris yesterday. . . ."

--but you were to feel, scarce less keenly, the dire descent to bathos
in "So killed themselves." It was almost the show-example, he would tell
you, of Browning's chief defect--over-statement.

"How did it happen, my poor boy?
You wanted to be Bonaparte,
And have the Tuileries for toy,
And could not, so it broke your heart. . . ."

How compassionately he would give that forth! "A screen of glass, you're
thankful for"; "Be quiet, and unclench your fist"; "Poor men God made,
and all for this!"--the phrases (how alert we were for the "phrase" in
those days) would fall grave and vibrant from the voice with its subtle
foreign colouring: you could always infuriate "H. H." by telling him he
had a foreign accent.

Those were Browning days; and now these are, or soon shall be. Two or
three years since, to quote him was, in the opinion of a _Standard_
reviewer, to write yourself down a back-number, as they say. I preserve
the cutting which damns with faint praise some thus antiquated short
stories of 1910. Browning and Wagner were so obsolete! . . . How young
that critic must have been--so young that he had never seen a star
return. Quite differently they come back--or is it quite the same? Soon
we shall be able to judge, for this star is returning, and--oh
wonder!--is trailing clouds of glory of the very newest cut. The stars
always do that, this watcher fancies, and certainly Browning, like the
Jub-jub, was ages ahead of the fashion. His passport for to-day is dated
up to the very hour--for though he cou