conducted a large correspondence; read new French, German,
and Italian books of mark; read and translated Euripides and Aeschylus;
knew all the gossip of the literary clubs, salons, and the studios;
was a frequenter of afternoon-tea parties; and then, over and above it,
he was Browning: the most profoundly subtle mind that has exercised itself
in poetry since Shakespeare. His personal grace and charm of manner
never failed. Whether he was dedicating "Balaustion's Adventure"
in terms of gracious courtesy, or handing a flower from some jar of roses,
or lilies, or his favourite daffodils, with a bright smile or merry glance,
to the lady of his regard, or when sending a copy of a new book of poetry
with an accompanying letter expressed with rare felicity,
or when generously prophesying for a young poet the only true success
if he will but listen and act upon "the inner voice", -- he was in all these,
and in all things, the ideal gentleman. There is so charming
and characteristic a touch in the following note to a girl-friend,
that I must find room for it: --

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* It was on his first experience of this kind, more than
a quarter of a century earlier, that he wrote the nobly patriotic lines
of "Home Thoughts from the Sea", and that flawless strain of bird-music,
"Home Thoughts from Abroad": then, also, that he composed
"How they brought the Good News". Concerning the last, he wrote, in 1881
(see `The Academy', April 2nd), "There is no sort of historical foundation
about [this poem]. I wrote it under the bulwark of a vessel
off the African coast, after I had been at it long enough to appreciate
even the fancy of a gallop on the back of a certain good horse, `York',
then in my stable at home. It was written in pencil
on the fly-leaf of Bartoli's `Simboli', I remember."
--