n
of the "Prometheus Bound" of Aeschylus.

Some years later, however, she entirely revised this early translation, of
which she wrote to Hugh Stuart Boyd that it was "as cold as Caucasus, and
flat as the neighboring plain," and that "a palinodia, a recantation," was
necessary to her. In her preface to the later translation she begged that
her reader would forgive her English for not being Greek, and herself for
not being Aeschylus.

CHAPTER III

1833-1841

"... I press God's lamp
Close to my breast; its splendor, soon or late,
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge one day."

BROWNING VISITS RUSSIA--"PARACELSUS"--RECOGNITION OF WORDSWORTH AND
LANDOR--"STRAFFORD"--FIRST VISIT TO ITALY--MRS. CARLYLE'S BAFFLED
READING OF "SORDELLO"--LOFTY MOTIF OF THE POEM--THE UNIVERSAL PROBLEM
OF LIFE--ENTHUSIASM FOR ITALY--THE SIBYLLINE LEAVES YET TO UNFOLD.

From Camberwell to St. Petersburg was somewhat of a transition. This was
Mr. Browning's initial excursion into a wider world of realities, as
distinguished from that mirage which rises in the world of dreams and
mental nebulae. "To know the universe itself as a road,--as many roads," is
the way in which the beckoning future prefigures itself to the artist
temperament.

"All around him Patmos lies
Who hath spirit-gifted eyes."

The eyes thus touched with the chrism of poetic art see the invisible
which is peopled with forms unseen to others, and which offers a panorama
of living drama. It is the poet who overhears the "talk of the gods," and
when he shall report

"Some random word they say,"

he becomes

"... the fated man of men
Whom the ages must obey."

This was the undreamed destiny hovering over the young poet, luring him on
like a guiding cloud which became a pillar of fire by night.

Among his London friends was the Chevalier George de Benkhausen, the
Russian Consul-General, who, being suddenly summoned to Russia on some
secret mission of state, invited Browning to accompany him. Browning went
"nominally in the character of secretary," Mrs. Orr says, and they fared
forth on March 1, by steamer to Rotterdam, and then journeyed more than
fifteen hundred miles by diligence, drawn by relays of galloping horses.
The expedition was to Browning a rich mine of poetic material. The
experience sank into the subconsciousness as seed to await fruition. In
his "Ivan Ivanovitch," where is seen

"This highwa