[91] Now in the National Portrait Gallery.  A reproduction of it is given as the frontispiece to vol. v. of the Poetical Works.

[92] ‘A Musical Instrument’; see p. 377, above.

[93] Gaeta, the last remaining stronghold of the Neapolitan Government, was besieged by the Italian forces from November to January.  During the first two months of the siege the French fleet prevented the Italians from operating against it by sea, and it was ultimately through the intervention of the English Government that Napoleon was persuaded to withdraw his ships.

[94] Viterbo had declared for the Italian government, but had been occupied by French troops on behalf of the Pope.  Many of the inhabitants left it, and a body of Italian volunteers entered the country in support of them.  It is presumably to this movement that the passage in the text refers.

[95] Poetical Works, v. 3.  The poem evidently refers to the loss of her brother Edward, but might be supposed (being published at this moment) to refer to the death of her sister Henrietta, shortly after which this letter was evidently written.

[96] Gaeta fell on January 15, 1861.

[97] Mr. Val Prinsep, R.A.

[98] Mrs. Orr’s Life shows that this was only a temporary phase.  In later life, especially, he was very regular in his hours of poetical work.

[99] It is curious that these are the very words which (as a translation from the Greek) Robert Browning used ten years later as the motto of his study of Louis Napoleon in ‘Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau’; but the ‘crowning’ was of a very different kind then.

    ’Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
    Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.’

[100] Poetical Works, iv. 252.

[101] Poetical Works, v. 6

[102] ‘Agnes Tremorne,’ Miss Blagden’s novel.

[103] After Mrs. Browning’s death, Mr. Story made a companion bust of her, and both busts were subsequently executed in marble on the commission of Mr. George Barrett, who presented them to Mr. R. Barrett Browning, in whose possession they have since remained.

[104] Cavour died on June 6, 1861.

[105] Mrs. Orr’s Life and Letters of Robert Browning, p. 249.

INDEX

Abd-el-Kader, i. 388

Aberdeen, Lord, ii. 109

About, E., ii. 226

AEschylus, i. 118, 168, 210;
  Translation of his ‘Prometheus Bound,’ i. 244

Agassiz, Miss, i. 458, 467, 468

Alexander, Sir William, i, 106

America, literary piracy in, i. 451;
  appreciation of Mrs. Browning’s poetry, i. 118, 120, 131, 177, 178,
      218, ii. 253, 364, 387;
    of Robert Browning, ii. 436;
  the slavery question, ii. 111, 411, 417, 419, 439

Anacreon, translation from, i. 263