[Footnote 14: Edmund Gosse: "Robert Browning Personalia," pp. 31, 32. Mr
W. M. Rossetti in "D.G. Rossetti, his Family Letters," i. 115, gives the
summer of 1850 as the date of his brother's letter; and says, no doubt
correctly, that Browning was in Venice at the time. Mr Sharp prints a
letter of Browning's on his early acquaintance with Rossetti, and on the
incident recorded above. I may here note that "Richmond," appended, with
a date, to _Pauline_, was a fancy or a blind; Browning never resided at
Richmond.]




Chapter II

Paracelsus and Sordello


There is little of incident in Browning's life to be recorded for the
period between the publication of _Pauline_ and the publication of
_Paracelsus_. During the winter of 1833-1834 he spent three months in
Russia, "nominally," says Mrs Orr, "in the character of secretary" to
the Russian consul-general, Mr Benckhausen. Memories of the endless
pine-forests through which he was driven on the way to St Petersburg may
have contributed long afterwards to descriptive passages of _Ivan
Ivanovitch._

In 1842 or 1843 he wrote a drama in five acts to which was given the
name "Only a Player-girl"; the manuscript lay for long in his portfolio
and never saw the light. "It was Russian," he tells Miss Barrett, "and