[Footnote 73: _To E.B.B._, Jan. 5, 1846.]

[Footnote 74: _By the Fireside_.]

[Footnote 75: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]

[Footnote 76: _Sordello_, i. 181.]

[Footnote 77: Jan. 5, 1846, apropos of a poem by Horne. The "love" may
refer to Horne's description of these things, but it matters little for
the present purpose.]

[Footnote 78: _Home Thoughts_.]

[Footnote 79: _Karshish_, i. 515. Cf. _Englishman in Italy_, i. 397.]

[Footnote 80: Cf., _e.g._, his treatment of the six-line stanza.]

Nor was his imaginative sculpture confined to low-relief. Every rift in
the surface catches his eye, and the deeper and more intricate the
recess, the more curiously his insinuating fancy explores it. Sordello's
palace is "a maze of corridors,"--"dusk winding stairs, dim galleries."
He probes the depths of the flower-bell; he pries after the warmth and
scent that lie within the "loaded curls" of his lady, and irradiates the
lizard, or the gnome,[81] in its rock-chamber, the bee in its amber
drop,[82] or in its bud,[83] the worm in its clod. When Keats describes
the closed eyes of the sleeping Madeline he is content with the
loveliness he sees:--

"And still she slept an _azure-lidded_ sleep."