by the flowers;
The same worked in the heart of the cedar and moved the vine bowers:
And the little brooks witnessing murmured, persistent and low,
With their obstinate, all but hushed voices--' E'en so, it is so!'"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: _Modern Painters_, Vol. IV., pp. 377-79.]

[Footnote 25: It is interesting to remember that Rossetti's first
water-colour was an illustration of this poem, and has for subject and
title the line, "Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"]

[Footnote 26: James Thomson, the writer of _The City of Dreadful
Night_.]

[Footnote 27: "Mr Browning is proud to remember," we are told by Mrs
Orr, "that Mazzini informed him he had read this poem to certain of his
fellow exiles in England to show how an Englishman could sympathise with
them."--_Handbook_ 2nd ed., p. 306.]

[Footnote 28: Some curious particulars are recorded in reference to the
composition of this poem. "_The Flight of the Duchess_ took its rise
from a line--'Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!' the burden of a
song which the poet, when a boy, heard a woman singing on a Guy Fawkes'
day. The poem was written in two parts, of which the first was published
in _Hood's Magazine_, April, 1845, and contained only nine sections. As
Mr Browning was writing it, he was interrupted by the arrival of a
friend on some important business, which drove all thoughts of the
Duchess and the scheme of her story out of the poet's head. But some
months after the publication of the first part, when he was staying at
Bettisfield Park, in Shropshire, a guest, speaking of early winter,
said, 'The deer had already to break the ice in the pond.' On this a
fancy struck the poet, and, on returning home, he worked it up into the
conclusion of _The Flight of the Duchess_ as it now stands."--_Academy_,
May 5, 1883.]

12. A SOUL'S TRAGEDY.

[Published in 1846 (with _Luria_) as No. VIII. of _Bells and
Pomegranates_ (_Poetical Works_, 1889, Vol. IV., pp.
257-302). Acted by the Stage Society at the Court Theatre,
March 13, 1904.]

The development of Browning's genius, as shown in his plays, has been
touched on in dealing with _Colombe's Birthday_. That play, as I
intimated, shows the first token of transition from the comparatively
conventional dramatic style of the early plays to the completely
unconventional style of the later ones, which in turn lead almost
imperceptibly to the final pausing-place of the mono