o time, is printed in Henry James's "W.W.
Story," vol. ii. pp. 153-156. The year--1864--may be ascertained by
comparing it with a letter addressed to F.T. Palgrave, given in
Palgrave's Life, the date of this letter being Oct. 19, 1864. Browning
in the letter to Story speaks of "the last two years in the dear rough
Ste.-Marie."]

[Footnote 89: Was the poem _Gold Hair_? If three stanzas were added to
the first draft before the poem appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_ the
number of lines would have been 120. Stanzas 21, 22 and 23 were added in
the _Dramatis Personae_ version.]

[Footnote 90: _Aristophanes' Apology_ (spoken of Euripides).]

[Footnote 91: Compare with _Epilogue: Third Speaker_ the lines from _A
Death in the Desert_:

Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death,
Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
As though a star should open out, all sides,
Grow the world on you, as it is my world.

[Footnote 92: Statements by Mrs Orr with respect to Browning's relations
to Christianity will be found on p. 319 and p. 373 of her Life of
Browning. She regarded "La Saisiaz" as conclusive proof of his
"heterodox attitude." Robert Buchanan, in the Epistle dedicatory to "The
Outcast," alleges that he questioned Browning as to whether he were a
Christian, and that Browning "thundered No!" The statement embodied in
my text above is substantially not mine but Browning's own. See on
_Ferishtah's Fancies_ in chapter xvi.]

Chapter XII

The Ring and the Book

The publication of _Dramatis Personae_ marks an advance in Browning's
growing popularity; a second edition, in which some improvements were
effected, was called for in 1864, the year of its first publication.
"All my new cultivators," Browning wrote, "are young men"; many of them
belonged to Oxford and Cambridge. But he was resolved to consult his own
taste, to take his own way, and let popularity delay or hasten as it
would--"pleasing myself," he says, "or aiming at doing so, and thereby,
I hope, pleasing God." His life had ordered itself as seemed best to
him--a life in London during the months in which the tide flows and
sparkles; then summer and autumn quietude in some retreat upon the
French coast. The years passed in such a uniformity of work and rest,
with enjoyment accompanying each of these, that they may almost be
grasped in bundles. In 1865, the holiday was again at Sainte-Marie, and
the weather was golden; but he noticed