Alps; and the plan of their next, and, though they did not know it, many
a following summer, was thus sketched out before the homeward journey
had begun.

Mr. Browning did not forget his work, even while resting from it; if
indeed he did rest entirely on this occasion. He consulted a Russian
lady whom he met at the hotel, on the names he was introducing in
'Ivan Ivanovitch'. It would be interesting to know what suggestions or
corrections she made, and how far they adapted themselves to the rhythm
already established, or compelled changes in it; but the one alternative
would as little have troubled him as the other. Mrs. Browning told Mr.
Prinsep that her husband could never alter the wording of a poem without
rewriting it, indeed, practically converting it into another; though he
more than once tried to do so at her instigation. But to the end of his
life he could at any moment recast a line or passage for the sake of
greater correctness, and leave all that was essential in it untouched.

Seven times more in the eleven years which remained to him, Mr. Browning
spent the autumn in Venice. Once also, in 1882, he had proceeded towards
it as far as Verona, when the floods which marked the autumn of that
year arrested his farther course. Each time he had halted first in some
more or less elevated spot, generally suggested by his French friend,
Monsieur Dourlans, himself an inveterate wanderer, whose inclinations
also tempted him off the beaten track. The places he most enjoyed were
Saint-Pierre la Chartreuse, and Gressoney Saint-Jean, where he stayed
respectively in 1881 and 1882, 1883 and 1885. Both of these had the
drawbacks, and what might easily have been the dangers, of remoteness
from the civilized world. But this weighed with him so little, that he
remained there in each case till the weather had broken, though there
was no sheltered conveyance in which he and his sister could travel