yet were
characteristic of Browning, and were sometimes followed by regret for
his own distemperature. In 1862 a gratifying task was laid on him--that
of superintending the three volume edition of his Poetical Works which
was published in the following year. At the same time his old friend
Forster, with help from Procter, was engaged in preparing the first--and
the best--of the several Selections from Browning's poems; it was at
once an indication of the growing interest in his writings and an
effective means towards extending their influence. He set himself
steadily to work out what was in him; he waited no longer upon his
casual moods, but girded his loins and kept his lamp constantly lit. His
genius, such as it was--this was the field given him to till, and he
must see that it bore fruit. "I certainly will do my utmost to make the
most of my poor self before I die"--so he wrote in 1865. There were
gains in such a resolved method of work; but there were also losses. A
man of so active a mind by planting himself before a subject could
always find something to say; but it might happen that such sheer
brain-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which
give its highest value to poetry.[87]

In the late summer and early autumn of 1862 Browning, in company with
his son, was among the Pyrenees at "green pleasant little Cambo, and
then at Biarritz crammed," he says, "with gay people of whom I know
nothing but their outsides." The sea and sands were more to his liking
than the gay people.[88] He had with him one book and no other--a
Euripides, in which he read vigorously, and that the readings were
fruitful his later poetry of the Greek drama bears witness. At present
however his creative work lay in another direction; the whole of "the
Roman murder story"--the story of Pompilia and Guido and Caponsacchi--he
describes as being pretty well in his head. It needed a long process of
evolution before the murder story could uncoil its sinuous lengths in a
series of volumes. The visit to Ste-Marie "a wild little place in
Brittany" near Pornic, in the summer of 1863--a visit to be repeated in
the two summers immediately succeeding--is directly connected with two
of the poems of _Dramatis Personae_. The story of _Gold Hair_ and the
landscape details of _James Lee's Wife_ are alike derived from Pornic.
The solitude of the little Breton hamlet soothed Browning's spirit. The
"good, stupid and dirty" people of the villag