ring this sojourn in Pisa that the "Sonnets from the Portuguese"
were first made known to him. Dr. Dowden quotes the story as given by Mr.
Edmund Gosse, and Mr. Gosse cites Browning himself as his authority. Yet
there was some mistake, as the Sonnets were not seen by Mr. Browning till
some time later.

Robert Barrett Browning, in Florence, in the spring of 1910, in reply to a
question asked by the writer of this book in regard to the accuracy of
this impression, replied that both Mr. Gosse and Dr. Dowden were mistaken;
as his mother did not show these "Sonnets" to his father until the summer
of 1849, when they were at Bagni di Lucca. Mr. Gosse must in some way have
mistaken Mr. Browning's words, and the error has perpetuated itself
through every successive biography of the poet.

The first home of the Brownings in Florence was in an apartment near
Santa Maria Novella, where the Italian sunshine burned fiercely, and where
Mrs. Browning exclaimed that she began to comprehend the possibility of
St. Lawrence's ecstasies on the gridiron. "Yet there have been cool
intermissions," she wrote, "and as we have spacious and airy rooms, and as
we can step out of the window on a balcony terrace which is quite private,
and swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon
watermelons, and iced water, and figs, and all manner of fruit, we bear
the heat with angelic patience."

There was a five days' interlude at Vallombrosa, which the poets vainly
entreated the monks to prolong to two months, but the brethren would have
none of the presence of two women,--Mrs. Browning and her maid, Wilson. So
they perforce left these fascinating hills, "a sea of hills looking alive
among the clouds." Still further up above the monastery was the old
Hermitage now transformed into a hotel. It was here that Migliorotti
passed many years, asserting that he could only think of it as Paradise,
and thus it came to be known as Paradisino, the name it still bears. Far
below in a dim distance lies Florence, with her domes and towers on which
the sunshine glitters, or the white moonlight of the Val d'Arno shines;
and on every hand are the deep valleys and crevasses, the Val di Sieve,
the Val di Casentino, and the height of San Miniato in Alpe. Castles and
convents, or their ruins, abound; and here Dante passed, and there St.
Benedict, and again is the path still holy with the footsteps of St.
Francis. The murmuring springs that feed the Arno are h