3 April 1876 – 9 April 1876

Browning paid us a visit 3.15 to 4.30 about. He breakfasts every morning at 8, not later, has luncheon at i. He tells me he has no dreams worth remembering — no beautiful or clever dreams, ' Except that a few times I have dreamed that I was among the mountains near Asolo (of Pippa Passes)^ and I said to myself, " I have often wished to see Asolo a second time, but now here I am and I'll go and do it." Once I dreamed I was seeing the elder Kean in Richard the Thirds and he uttered a line which struck me as immensely finer than anything else in the play, or than I had ever heard perhaps, and I perceived it was not Shakespeare's, but my own invention. It was in the scene where the ghosts rise. When I woke I still had hold of the stupendous line, and it was this — And when I wake my dreams are madness — Damn me. ' I never dream but when out of sorts in healtFi.' Browning looked at a photograph of himself on my chimney-piece and said, ' There I am — and I don't recollect when or where it was done, or anything about it. I find gaps in my memory. The other day I came by chance on an old letter of my own, telling how I had seen Ristori in Camma — if that was the word, and I could not and cannot recollect in the very least what Camma is, or what I refer to : yet there it was in my own handwriting — a judgment on me for my opinion of my Grandfather, when I asked him if he had seen Garrick in Richard the Third and he replied " I suppose I have," and I thought " Bless my soul ! shall / ever come to this." People compliment me on my prodigious memory, because I have a knack of remembering rhymes — " hog " and " dog," and so forth ; but it's breaking down.' B. took down Quarles's Emblems from the shelf, and turned it over. ' Whose pencil marks are these } ' ' Mine,' I told him. B. said, ' Quarles did a great deal for me — he was a man of great gehius.' He read aloud passages here and there — e.g. She's empty : hark, she sounds, there's nothing there But noise to fill thy ear, etc. Trust not this hollow world ; she's empty ; hark, she sounds. And with especial relish the close of the dialogue of Eve and the Serpent — Eve. — fruit's made for food : I'll pull, and taste, and tempt my Adam too To know the secrets of this dainty. Serpent. — Do. ' That's exquisite ! ' Browning said. We talked of music. B. goes to all the best concerts and musical parties he can. Spoke of people who know nothing at all of music. ' Last night at a private house — Joachim playing "Beethoven" ; Mrs. P., sitting next me, knew and cared absolutely nothing about it.' 1 tried to say that there are people with no ear and also people with some, though not much, and these latter may, having sensitive and imaginative souls, be much moved by what does reach them ; and I instanced Carlyle — but had no sooner uttered the name than B., more suo, snatched the ball out of my hands, and ran off with it in another direction. ' Carlyle talks the most utter rubbish about Beethoven, knows absolutely nothing about it, etc. etc' And went on to declare, in his rapid way, that no untrained person could know or feel anything of this high music. ' It cannot be reached per saltum — instead of a melody in a song or ballad, you have, in the harmonies and transitions, countless melodies melted and flowing and mingling,' and so on. Browning asked for Gerald, took him in his arms and kissed him ; looked at Carlyle's mug.^ Hardly looked at Helen's drawing — talked con- h temptuously of Dizzy. ' Snobbishly changed his name 5 from D'Israeli to Disraeli. D. a great tyrant to every- body. Told me he had never seen Carlyle, and I brought him up to Boehm's Statue.'