ome, and--may I hint it?--just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to
lemon-coloured kid gloves and such things, quite the glass of fashion
and the mould of form. But full of 'ambition,' eager for success,
eager for fame, and, what is more, determined to conquer fame and to
achieve success." That is as good a portrait as we can have of the
Browning of these days--quite self-satisfied, but not self-conscious
young man; one who had outgrown, but only just outgrown, the pure
romanticism of his boyhood, which made him run after gipsy caravans
and listen to nightingales in the wood; a man whose incandescent
vitality, now that it had abandoned gipsies and not yet immersed
itself in casuistical poems, devoted itself excitedly to trifles, such
as lemon-coloured kid gloves and fame. But a man still above all
things perfectly young and natural, professing that foppery which
follows the fashions, and not that sillier and more demoralising
foppery which defies them. Just as he walked in coolly and yet
impulsively into a private drawing-room and offered to play, so he
walked at this time into the huge and crowded salon of European
literature and offered to sing.

CHAPTER II

EARLY WORKS

In 1840 _Sordello_ was published. Its reception by the great majority
of readers, including some of the ablest men of the time, was a
reception of a kind probably unknown in the rest of literary history,
a reception that was neither praise nor blame. It was perhaps best
expressed by Carlyle, who wrote to say that his wife had read
_Sordello_ with great interest, and wished to know whether Sordello
was a man, or a city, or a book. Better known, of course, is the story
of Tennyson, who said that the first line of the poem--

"Who will, may hear Sordello's story told,"

and the last line--

"Who would, has heard Sordello's story told,"

were the only two lines in the poem that he understood, and they were
lies.

Perhaps the best story, however, of all the cycle of Sordello legends
is that which is related of Douglas Jerrold. He was recovering from an
illness; and having obtained permission for the first time to read a
little during the day, he picked up a book from a pile beside the bed
and began _Sordello_. No sooner had he done so than he turned deadly
pale, put down the book, and said, "My God! I'm an idiot. My health
is restored, but my mind's gone. I can't understand two consecutive
lines of an English poem." He then summoned