ing its grotesque ways; when it
escaped, he was characteristically enough delighted. The old man could
be seen continually in the lanes round Asolo, peering into hedges and
whistling for the lizards.

This serene and pastoral decline, surely the mildest of slopes into
death, was suddenly diversified by a flash of something lying far
below. Browning's eye fell upon a passage written by the distinguished
Edward Fitzgerald, who had been dead for many years, in which
Fitzgerald spoke in an uncomplimentary manner of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. Browning immediately wrote the "Lines to Edward Fitzgerald,"
and set the whole literary world in an uproar. The lines were bitter
and excessive to have been written against any man, especially bitter
and excessive to have been written against a man who was not alive to
reply. And yet, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel a
certain dark and indescribable pleasure in this last burst of the old
barbaric energy. The mountain had been tilled and forested, and laid
out in gardens to the summit; but for one last night it had proved
itself once more a volcano, and had lit up all the plains with its
forgotten fire. And the blow, savage as it was, was dealt for that
great central sanctity--the story of a man's youth. All that the old
man would say in reply to every view of the question was, "I felt as
if she had died yesterday."

Towards December of 1889 he moved to Venice, where he fell ill. He
took very little food; it was indeed one of his peculiar small fads
that men should not take food when they are ill, a matter in which he
maintained that the animals were more sagacious. He asserted
vigorously that this somewhat singular regimen would pull him through,
talked about his plans, and appeared cheerful. Gradually, however, the
talking became more infrequent, the cheerfulness passed into a kind of
placidity; and without any particular crisis or sign of the end,
Robert Browning died on December 12, 1889. The body was taken on board
ship by the Venice Municipal Guard, and received by the Royal Italian
marines. He was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, the
choir singing his wife's poem, "He giveth His beloved sleep." On the
day that he died _Asolando_ was published.

CHAPTER VI

BROWNING AS A LITERARY ARTIST

Mr. William Sharp, in his _Life_ of Browning, quotes the remarks of
another critic to the following effect: "The poet's processes of
thought are scien