ngenuity through almost all the pages of a laborious
book in creating a tangle and embroilment of evil and good, of truth and
falsehood, in view of the fact that a shining moment is at last to
spring forward and do its work of severing absolutely and finally right
from wrong, and shame from a splendour of righteousness. Browning's
readers longed at times, and not without cause, for the old directness
and the old pervading presence of spiritual and impassioned truth.[102]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 93: Letter to Miss Blagden, Feb. 24, 1870, given by Mrs Orr,
p. 287.]

[Footnote 94: Vivid descriptions of Le Croisic at an earlier date may be
found in one of Balzac's short stories.]

[Footnote 95: _Life of Jowett_ by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell, i.
400, 401.]

[Footnote 96: A repeated invitation in 1877 was also declined. In 1875
Browning was nominated by the Independent Club to the office of Lord
Rector of Glasgow University.]

[Footnote 97: Such a book would naturally attract Browning, who, like
his father, had an interest in celebrated criminal cases. In his
_Memories_ (p. 338), Kegan Paul records his surprise at a dinner-party
where the conversation turned on murder, to find Browning acquainted "to
the minutest detail" with every _cause celebre_ of that kind within
living memory.]

[Footnote 98: _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by R. Lehmann (1894), p.
224.]

[Footnote 99: Rossetti Papers, p. 302.]

[Footnote 100: So the story was told by Dante Rossetti, as recorded by
Mrs Gilchrist; she says that she believed the story was told of himself
by Carlyle.]

[Footnote 101: The passage specially referred to is in Caponsacchi's
monologue, II. 936-973, beginning with "Thought? nay, sirs, what shall
follow was not thought."]

[Footnote 102: I have used here some passages already printed in my
_Studies in Literature_.]

Chapter XIII

Poems on Classical Subjects

During these years, 1869-1878, Browning's outward life maintained its
accustomed ways. In the summer of 1869 he wandered with his son and his
sister, in company with his friends of Italian days, the Storys, in
Scotland, and at Lock Luichart Lodge visited Lady Ashburton.[103] Three
summers, those of 1870, 1872 and 1873 were spent at Saint-Aubin, a wild
"un-Murrayed" village on the coast of Normandy, where Milsand occupied a
little cottage hard by. At night the light-house of Havre shot forth its
beam, and it was with "a thrill" that Browning saw