used to be rather afraid of Browning.”  His cordiality was not insincere; but it belonged to his outer, not his inner self.  With the exception of Milsand, he appears to have admitted no man to his heart, though he gave a portion of his intellect to many.  His friends, in the more intimate sense of the word, were women, towards whom his feeling was that of comradeship and fraternal affection without over-much condescension or any specially chivalric sentiment.  When early in their acquaintance Miss Barrett promised Browning that he would find her “an honest man on the whole,” she understood her correspondent, who valued a good comrade of the other sex, and had at the same time a vivid sense of the fact that such a comrade was not so unfortunate as to be really a man.

Let witnesses be cited and each give his fragment of evidence.  Mr W.J.  Stillman, an excellent observer, was specially impressed in his intercourse with Browning, by the mental health and robustness of a nature sound to the core; “an almost unlimited intellectual vitality, and an individuality which nothing could infringe on, but which a singular sensitiveness towards others prevented from ever wounding even the most morbid sensibility; a strong man armed in the completest defensive armour, but with no aggressiveness."[122] A writer in the first volume of The New Review, described Browning as a talker in general society so faithfully that it is impossible to improve on what he has said:  “It may safely be alleged,” he writes, “that no one meeting Mr Browning for the first time, and unfurnished with a clue, would guess his vocation.  He might be a diplomatist, a statesman, a discoverer, or a man of science.  But, whatever were his calling, we should feel that it must be essentially practical....  His conversation corresponds to his appearance.  It abounds in vigour, in fire, in vivacity.  Yet all the time it is entirely free from mystery, vagueness, or technical jargon.  It is the crisp, emphatic and powerful discourse of a man of the world, who is incomparably better informed than the mass of his congeners.  Mr Browning is the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers.  Like the Monsignore in Lothair he can ’sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee,’ and when he deals in criticism the edge of his sword is mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity.  The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lend their special emphasis to the condemnation.”  The mental quality which most impressed Mr W.M.  Rossetti in his communications with Browning was, he says, “celerity “—­“whatever he had to consider or speak about, he disposed of in the most forthright style.”  His method was of the greatest directness; “every touch told, every nail was hit on the head.”  He was not a sustained, continuous speaker, nor exactly a brilliant one; “but he said something pleasant and pointed on whatever turned up; ... one felt his