to the descriptive analysis of none but the poems inspired by Italy,
Italian personages and history, Italian Painting, Sculpture,
Architecture, and Music. From Porphyria and her lover to Pompilia
and all the direful Roman tragedy wherein she is as a moon of beauty
above conflicting savage tides of passion, what an unparalleled
gallery of portraits, what a brilliant phantasmagoria,
what a movement of intensest life!

It is pleasant to know of one of them, "The Italian in England",
that Browning was proud, because Mazzini told him he had read this poem
to certain of his fellow-exiles in England to show how an Englishman
could sympathise with them.

After leaving Russia the young poet spent the rest of his `Wanderjahr'
in Italy. Among other places he visited was Asolo,
that white little hill-town of the Veneto, whence he drew hints
for "Sordello" and "Pippa Passes", and whither he returned
in the last year of his life, as with unconscious significance
he himself said, "on his way homeward."

In the summer of 1834, that is, when he was in his twenty-second year,
he returned to Camberwell. "Sordello" he had in some fashion begun,
but had set aside for a poem which occupied him throughout
the autumn of 1834 and winter of 1835, "Paracelsus". In this period, also,
he wrote some short poems, two of them of particular significance.
The first of the series was a sonnet, which appeared above the signature `Z'
in the August number of the `Monthly Repository' for 1834.
It was never reprinted by the author, whose judgment
it is impossible not to approve as well as to respect.
Browning never wrote a good sonnet, and this earliest effort