were sometimes followed by regret for his own distemperature.  In 1862 a gratifying task was laid on him—­that of superintending the three volume edition of his Poetical Works which was published in the following year.  At the same time his old friend Forster, with help from Procter, was engaged in preparing the first—­and the best—­of the several Selections from Browning’s poems; it was at once an indication of the growing interest in his writings and an effective means towards extending their influence.  He set himself steadily to work out what was in him; he waited no longer upon his casual moods, but girded his loins and kept his lamp constantly lit.  His genius, such as it was—­this was the field given him to till, and he must see that it bore fruit.  “I certainly will do my utmost to make the most of my poor self before I die”—­so he wrote in 1865.  There were gains in such a resolved method of work; but there were also losses.  A man of so active a mind by planting himself before a subject could always find something to say; but it might happen that such sheer brain-work was carried on by plying other faculties than those which give its highest value to poetry.[87]

In the late summer and early autumn of 1862 Browning, in company with his son, was among the Pyrenees at “green pleasant little Cambo, and then at Biarritz crammed,” he says, “with gay people of whom I know nothing but their outsides.”  The sea and sands were more to his liking than the gay people.[88] He had with him one book and no other—­a Euripides, in which he read vigorously, and that the readings were fruitful his later poetry of the Greek drama bears witness.  At present however his creative work lay in another direction; the whole of “the Roman murder story”—­the story of Pompilia and Guido and Caponsacchi—­he describes as being pretty well in his head.  It needed a long process of evolution before the murder story could uncoil its sinuous lengths in a series of volumes.  The visit to Ste-Marie “a wild little place in Brittany” near Pornic, in the summer of 1863—­a visit to be repeated in the two summers immediately succeeding—­is directly connected with two of the poems of Dramatis Personae.  The story of Gold Hair and the landscape details of James Lee’s Wife are alike derived from Pornic.  The solitude of the little Breton hamlet soothed Browning’s spirit.  The “good, stupid and dirty” people of the village were seldom visible except on Sunday; there were solitary walks of miles to be had along the coast; fruit and milk, butter and eggs in abundance, and these were Browning’s diet.  “I feel out of the very earth sometimes,” he wrote, “as I sit here at the window....  Such a soft sea, and such a mournful wind!” But the lulling charm of the place which, though so different, brought back the old Siena mood, did not convert him into an idler.  The mornings, which began betimes, were given to work; in his way of desperate resolve to be well occupied he informs Miss Blagden (Aug. 18, 1863) that having yesterday written a poem of 120 lines, he means to keep writing whether he likes it or not.[89]