When in the evenings Browning read aloud he did not, like Tennyson, as described by Mr Rossetti, allow his voice to “sway onward with a long-drawn chaunt” which gave “noble value and emphasis to the metrical structure and pauses.”  His delivery was full and distinctive, but it “took much less account than Tennyson’s of the poem as a rhythmical whole; his delivery had more affinity to that of an actor, laying stress on all the light and shade of the composition—­its touches of character, the conversational points, its dramatic give-and-take.  In those qualities of elocution in which Tennyson was strong, and aimed to be strong, Browning was contentedly weak; and vice versa."[146] Sometimes, like another great poet, Pope, he was deeply affected by the passion of beauty or heroism or pathos in what he read, and could not control his feelings.  Mrs Orr mentions that in reading aloud his translation of the Herakles, he, like Pope in reading a passage of his Iliad, was moved to tears.  Dr Furnivall tells of the mounting excitement with which he once delivered in the writer’s hearing his Ixion.  When at La Mura after his dreamy playing, on a spinet of 1522, old airs, melodious, melancholy airs, Browning would propose to read aloud, it was not his own poetry that he most willingly chose.  “No R.B. to-night,” he would say; “then with a smile, ’Let us have some real poetry’”; and the volume would be one by Shelley or Keats, or Coleridge or Tennyson.  It was as a punishment to his hostess for the crime of having no Shakespeare on her shelves that he threatened her with one of his “toughest poems”; but the tough poem, interpreted by his emphasis and pauses, became “as clear and comprehensible as one could possibly desire.”  In his talk at Asolo “he seemed purposely to avoid deep and serious topics.  If such were broached in his presence he dismissed them with one strong, convincing sentence, and adroitly turned the current of conversation into a shallower channel.”

A project which came very near his heart was that of purchasing from the municipal authorities a small piece of ground, divided from La Mura by a ravine clothed with olive and other trees, “on which stood an unfinished building”—­the words are Mrs Bronson’s—­“commanding the finest view in Asolo.”  He desired much to have a summer or autumn abode to which he might turn with the assurance of rest in what most pleased and suited him.  In imagination, with his characteristic eagerness, he had already altered and added to the existing structure, and decided on the size and aspect of the loggia which was to out-rival that of La Mura. “’It shall have a tower,’ he said, ’whence I can see Venice at every hour of the day, and I shall call it “Pippa’s Tower"....  We will throw a rustic bridge across the streamlet in the ravine.’” And then, in a graver mood:  “It may not be for me to enjoy it long—­who can say?  But it will be useful for Pen and his family....  But I am good for ten years yet.”  And when his son visited Asolo and approved of the project of Pippa’s Tower, Browning’s happiness in his dream was complete.  It was on the night of his death that the authorities of Asolo decided that the purchase might be carried into effect.